Alkira has emerged from the shadows, following more than a year of secrecy, with the launch of its first product and $30 million of Series A funding.

Founded in 2018 by brothers Atif Khan and Amir Khan, former Viptela CEO, Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) aims to automate and abstract away the complexity of multicloud deployments into a point and click service.

Cloud networking on its own is complicated enough and the problem gets worse when you start to look at multicloud deployments, CEO Amir Khan explained.

“It becomes exponentially more complex because not only do you have to learn the other clouds, but all the constructs that are different,” he said, adding that enterprises also have to account for different limitations with each of the cloud providers.

That’s the problem that the Khan brothers and the rest of their team set out to solve with CSX. The service is designed to stitch together the various cloud providers while eliminating the need to understand the nuances of each cloud.

“We have created a single solution for all clouds from the computer networking perspective,” Khan said. “The idea is to provide common connectivity and higher layer services like firewalls, address management, [and] load balancers.”

CSX is available as a service through an online portal. There is no need for hardware or software on the user’s end, he says.

“You give us the credentials to your cloud environments and we’ll pull down all the key elements like [virtual private clouds] and stitch them together from a routing and segmentation perspective end to end without you having to do anything.”

The company claims to be able to provision a global multicloud deployment with the press of a button and in less time than it takes to finish a cup of coffee.

Enterprises are looking at multicloud deployments for many reasons, including geographic advantages, application performance, or the result of mergers and acquisitions.

“Each one of these clouds have different capabilities where they are better,” Khan said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic many cloud providers, including Microsoft, are prioritizing capacity to serve first responders and health care workers in the event of capacity issues.

Companies using Azure that suddenly run into capacity issues might consider shifting their workload to another cloud provider but to do this manually is an incredibly time-consuming process, according to Alkira CMO Sangeeta Anand.

“With Alkira, in less than an hour, they can establish cloud networking connectivity in a secure manner,” she said.

The technology has garnered Alkira more than $30 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital with both investing a respective $10.5 million. The company also received $8 million in funding from GV, formerly Google Ventures, in the form of a follow-on convertible note.

Alkira has also received resounding praise from ONUG co-founder and vice chair Ernest Lefner. The technology is a “game changer” that will “empower networking professionals to build and operate a network as a utility and address the challenges that enterprises face connecting and supporting multiple clouds,” he said.

“Alkira CSX handles the heavy lifting in operationalizing virtual cloud networking, including the delivery of new capabilities like patching security, monitoring, troubleshooting, visibility, and upgrades which are all handled transparently.”

Alkira can help any company that’s in the middle of a cloud migration, regardless of the type of business, according to Khan.

“Most of the fortune 100 type companies we’re going to try and address directly,” he explained.

Beyond those direct sales, Khan said the company is working on building out a partner network of managed service providers, system integrators, and telecom partners to reach customers.

He envisions Alkira being particularly popular among service providers looking to benefit from the cloud transformation.

“They want to become more relevant, and they want to increase their average revenue per account by extending their capabilities beyond their private offerings,” Khan said.